Australia has recorded a steady decline in rates of HIV over the past decade and could be on track to virtually eliminate the insidious disease.

A slower reduction among some groups and a high rate of late detections are still troubling experts, however, with 44 per cent of patients living unknowingly with the disease for four or more years.

Figures released by the Kirby Institute on Thursday show a 46 per cent fall in new Australian HIV cases in the past decade, with 555 recorded in 2022 compared to a total of 1037 in 2013.

Australia's rate of decline is among the best in the world, in line with other leading countries in northern Europe, and well ahead of rates in the US and Canada.

A "virtual" elimination does not mean zero new cases of HIV, but an absence of sustained endemic community transmission.

Brisbane is hosting the International AIDS Society conference on HIV this weekend, bringing together scientists, policy makers and advocates.

Sharon Lewin, the society's president and director of the Peter Doherty Institute, said Australia has maintained a progressive approach to HIV since the very beginning of the pandemic in the early 1980s.

"Australia is poised to be one of the first, if not the first, countries to achieve virtual elimination of HIV," Dr Lewin said.

Gay and bisexual men still make up the majority of HIV diagnoses but now represent a smaller portion, accounting for 57 per cent of new cases last year compared with 79 per cent in 2013.

Andrew Grulich, who heads the Kirby Institute's HIV epidemiology and prevention program, said the group could be virtually HIV-free within the next three to five years.

"We have a trendline which if continued out into the future would lead to a 90 per cent reduction of incidence - which is what the (United Nations AIDS/HIV program) defines as the end of AIDS as a public health threat," Professor Grulich said.

The groups showing the slowest reduction in HIV rates in Australia are people born overseas and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders accounted for 25 HIV cases in 2022, increasing from 17 cases the year before.

Rates among overseas-born gay and bisexual men have remained steady up until around 2020 when they started to decline following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prof Grulich said one of the reasons for this is heightened levels of stigma against HIV and homosexuality stemming from some home countries.

"You have to address issues of equity," he said.

"If you don't have equity you will always get this insidious disease finding marginalised populations."